Never Forgotten
by TheSilentPen
Summary: "They rebuilt Mindoir. It wasn't the same." Memories of the Batarian raid on Mindoir haunt Commander Avery Shepard. For the first time in nearly sixteen years, Shepard allows herself to be selfish for a day and visit Mindoir. But only for today, and only to honor his memory.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters.

**A/N:** Hello everyone, I'm TheSilentPen. This isn't my usual section, but I played a decent amount of Mass Effect while I recovered from a respiratory illness that had me on my back for three or four months. I had the idea for a while, but I finally had the time to write it. My Shepard was from Mindoir, and so I got that sad little quote during From Ashes. I wanted to explore Shepard's background a little bit, and so this fic was born. I usually don't write Sci-Fi because I'm not very experienced in it, but Mass Effect is my exception.

I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

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**Never Forgotten**

_TheSilentPen_

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"_They rebuilt Mindoir. It wasn't the same,_"

~Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 3

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The jacket came first—fastened at the throat and creased expertly at the sleeves. She brushed the navy fabric of invisible lint particles and polished the bright gold buckles to perfection.

The medals came next. A ragtag collection of cheap ribbon and twisted silver filigree baptized in the blood of wicked and innocent. She fixed them to her chest, shoulders buckling as she aged beneath the weight of too many lives.

She tapped the boots on, black leather spit shined and sparkling under cheap fluorescent lighting. Hard soles clacked against the metal floor of her cabin.

The door to the bathroom gave a faint 'whoosh' as she stepped over its threshold. Her arms held her suspended against the sink's aluminum facing.

She _searched_ the world weary features of the individual staring back at her. Looked for a trace of a teasing smile, a mischievous sparkle. Something from the past, anything to show _she_ was still alive.

But all she could see, staring back with dead eyes, was the soldier. The cheerless downturn of the mouth. The cruel patterning of a ropy scar slashing its way across the bridge of a chiseled nose, joined by a clean slash across the right eye, meeting at the cheek. Silver eyes that had once been _magnificent_ dulled by a stern narrowing and the recollection of lifeblood—guilty and innocent—spilling in warm spatters across her hands.

Avery Shepard was _dead_. Not a single trace remained in this tragic parody of a woman. She'd been dead and buried for _years_, sealed away with the mangled corpses of Mother, Father...

Her hands trembled against the metal. She grasped at the constricting collar at her throat, teeth grinding.

…With _John_.

The deafening cacophony of Batarian frigates as they spilled onto the planet, the snap of assault rifles, the stench of cooked flesh, the oozing warmth of blood and sand, the rising screams of _her_ people—beaten, shackled, or left for dead—assailed her senses.

She felt the soreness in her throat as she screamed, watching Father fall to his knees. His blood fell like rubies from a long, narrow slit in his throat. His dirt crusted fingers clawing for freedom against the bloody digits of a snarling Batarian slaver. Avery could count the scrapes on her fists as she fought against Noah's hold, desperate to reach her brother.

Hearing his deep, rumbling tones over the rising chaos as he begged for mercy. The ghastly maroon of his blood as it soaked into the ravenous soil, leaking from the melancholy curve of his mouth. The relief in the dead grey of his eyes as Noah grabbed her in his arms and _ran._

It haunted her for the next sixteen years. Haunted her as she stood in her cabin, searching for someone she'd lost in favor of wearing the features of a soldier who'd given up living long ago.

Avery Shepard of Mindoir wanted a full life. An ordinary life sitting on the hill overlooking the town under her favorite tree. She wanted her pencil in her hand, giving life to notes rolling through her head on the blank, coffee stained pages of sheet music John pilfered from the local piano teacher's trashcan.

It wasn't a glamorous existence—her parents were farmers and made a decent living. They couldn't afford the luxuries many of the advanced colonies enjoyed. Couldn't give John and Avery sparkling views of artificial sunlight breaking across the tall silver skyscrapers or the commercialized splendor of the Citadel's lounges. They'd never be able to afford the newest Omnitool model or own a skycar that wasn't secondhand. But the Shepards were hard workers, loved their children fiercely, and gave of themselves what they could.

They had been _happy_, and that was all that mattered.

But happiness mattered little to Commander Avery Shepard of the Systems Alliance, N7 soldier, Captain of the Normandy, and humanity's first Spectre.

Commander Shepard existed to serve and safeguard the happiness of _others_. To right the wrongs in the galaxy and defend its human colonists.

It was a comfortable mask that Avery wore since first signing up for the Navy. One that held together the scattered, broken pieces of the woman within.

She accepted the fact that when she died, she wouldn't die lying down. She'd go out in a blaze of glory under enemy fire, assault rifle in hand and dog tags jingling beneath the grimy interior of her suit.

Commander Shepard lived to die.

Except _today_.

She stood, straightening her shoulders and pressing out the lines of her jacket.

_Today_ was the one day each year she allowed herself to be selfish.

No one questioned her as she strode through the CIC in her dress blues. Not one person commented as she left the Normandy _alone_, piloting the shuttle without a single gun in her possession.

She parked the shuttle just outside the outskirts of the town, stepping forward and settling onto the rocky soil.

Shepard lifted her head and searched. Looked for some sign this strange, foreign world was _still _her home. Her Mindoir.

But it was not.

Father Francis' 'church,' a ramshackle old thing with a dented tin roof and fading red siding, no longer stood as she remembered it. In its place, a straight edged, sleek metallic home greedily sprawled across the land.

The town square, once a cobblestone circle amidst a claustrophobic gathering of buildings, was gone. Now a park, lush with trees that once dotted the outskirts of the village, graced the heart of the town, identical, sterile metal homes circling its center in measured distances.

Shepard shoved her hands into her pockets as she stood on the pristine sidewalk outside one of the new, polished aluminum homes in a haze of remembrance.

The owners of this metal monstrosity built atop the charred remains of the Shepard family home.

In place of metal, there had been wood. Shepard's father, a descendant of carpenters, helped to build it when he and his wife first arrived on Mindoir, an infant John held swaddled between them.

"We were among the first in the stars, sweetheart," her father's smile sparkled in the noonday sun, the sweat trickling from his dark hair as he labored in the fields. "It's only right we be among the first to build. We're pioneers, Avery. Shepards have _always_ been."

Her father built a one-story, soft blue home with a strong white roof. She and John would sit in the screened in porch, sipping on lemonade and playing card games. Sometimes, Avery would lie on the floor, back against the siding. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of her mother's fingers dance across the keys.

Maria Shepard came from a family of musicians. Her father had been a composer of some renown, her mother, an opera singer. They started their children on instruments young, a tradition Maria continued with John and Avery.

John shied away from music, but Avery excelled and found pleasure in it. She'd sit on her mother's lap for hours at a time and press the keys beneath her fingers as Maria smiled down at her.

She and her friends roughhoused in the front yard—they played soccer, fenced, and tackled each other to the ground.

She couldn't remember their faces now. Only remember the smiling curve of their lips, their features blotted out by the harsh, yellow brown rays of Mindoir's sun.

Each night, they fell on their knees, blood frothing from their lungs, and reached for her. The sickly maroon color painted her nightmares and stained the wooden siding a ghastly, acrid yellow.

They remained faceless silhouettes, features lost in the haze of one-too-many drunken nights on shore leave and the _want—_the maddening _need_ to forget.

Yet still, their names fell from her shameful lips like mad prayers. She whispered them under her breath. Wadded her fists together, trembled, and repeated them on quivering lips sitting on her bunk.

Those names… they would never be lost to her. They would never go silent.

They were as indivisible from her as Avery was.

Sometimes Shepard forgot that this _happy_ chapter of her life ever existed. The military had been all she'd ever known for _so_ long.

It was hard to think Avery Shepard ever existed. That once she'd been so _naïve_ and _gullible_. Thought the best of everything in the galaxy. Believed that she and her family could continue on as they always had for the rest of their lives.

That one day, she'd leave Mindoir to ply her fortune. Hell, maybe even make her way to Earth. She'd play her music and wander the galaxy until the wanderlust left her blood. After that, Avery would return to Mindoir, settle down, and live her life with her family.

She always believed she would have Mindoir to return to.

All Commander Shepard had to her name? All of it fit into two, pathetically small cardboard boxes and a closet of military issue garments.

Hell, the clothes weren't even hers.

Most of her belongings—what little she'd escaped with from Mindoir—burned in the flames that'd stolen the Normandy and her _life_.

Shepard could claim nothing as her own.

Nothing except intangible memories of a world and time that no longer existed.

Shepard stood staring several moments longer before pivoting on her heel and starting slowly down the street.

Her legs carried her down a path memorized by heart. It brought back memories of cool spring days, gripping John's large hand, their connected fingers swinging against the stiff leg of his Sunday dress trousers.

Shepard paused short of a pristine white gate, silver eyes tracing the crisp black lettering of a sign hammered into the earth.

'_Grissom Cemetery.'_

Vivid orange leaves crunched underfoot as she proceeded into the cemetery.

Rows of lonely, white marble slabs sprung forth from a carpet of emerald velvet.

Shepard strode forward, eyes ghosting on the names chiseled into the stone.

Her advanced stopped at a group of three stones nestled intimately together amidst the organized distances in the rest of the yard.

Gloved fingers stroked the stained marble of two tombstones. A faint smile curved Shepard's lips as she let her fingers fall against the etched letters.

"Hey Mom and Dad," she whispered. A melancholy spark lit her eyes. "It's been a while. I'm sorry I haven't come to visit. It's been a busy sixteen years.

"I'm in the military now," she shoved her hand into her pockets. "Commander of a stealth warship and a Spectre for the Alliance. Who'd have ever thought it, right?" Shepard chuckled, shaking her head.

"I'll fill you in more later… but for right now, I have a birthday boy to see," she nodded over to her left.

The smile faded from Shepard's lips as she knelt next to the last tombstone, resting her hand beside the name carved into the marble.

"Hey, John," her voice softened, almost nonexistent. "It's me, Avery. I'm all grown up now.

"I'm sorry I didn't bring you flowers or anything like that," she continued, resting her hands against her knees. "But I remembered that you didn't like anything material. Always said spending time together was more important than anything else in the world.

"I'm in the military now, you know," she gave a dry laugh. "I know that was your dream. But after you… you went away, I just couldn't let it die. Someone needed to do something to right all the wrongs out there. Without you here, I thought the most logical conclusion would be to do it myself. And… you know, I'm good at it, John."

She gave a half smile. "I was surprised when I got out of basic. Didn't think I'd ever amount to being good at anything other than music. But now, here I am, a bonafide Commander… or, really, ex-Commander. I'm not sure what rank they give to once-dead Alliance Spectres working for a pro-human military power."

Her eyes fell to the ground. "John, there's something big coming. Something that could destroy everything. I'm trying to warn everyone… trying to make them see the signs, but they just _won't. _I don't know what else I can do."

Her hands fell to the ground, grasping at the dirt with trembling fingers. "You'd know what to do. You _always_ knew what to do. You'd get them to listen, get them to understand."

Tears marked clean lines across Shepard's cheeks. Her shoulders heaved with sobs. White gloves stained green as she uprooted the grass and held the earth in her desperate fingers.

"John, you should be here instead of me," Shepard's voice quivered. "I should be six feet under... You… you were everything fucking good in this world and I was just a naïve little girl."

She laughed. "My God, everything I ever told you must have sounded so juvenile. It's a wonder you didn't knock me on my ass when I painted a picture of a perfect galaxy. There are so many things that are wrong—so many good people dying when they don't need to because _we've _failed them."

Her nails dug through the fibers of her gloves. "Mindoir could've been saved if the Council stood united… If the races valued one another and stopped their adolescent fighting. Instead, everything fell to pieces and good people died.

"That's what I want to stand for," Shepard continued, nodding. "I want to be a decent person. That's all I want. I want to serve, safeguard, and help those in need. That's what I've given my life to represent. That's what I want to leave behind."

She swallowed, closed her eyes, and nodded. "That's what I _need_ my life to represent."

_'Because it's what you wanted __**your**__ life to represent_.'

Shepard dusted of her hands and crossed her legs, staring around. "This world... This _place_. It isn't where we grew up," she commented offhandedly, shaking her head. "It just goes to show… once something is broken, it's never the same."

She gave the stone an odd half smile. "I don't belong here anymore."

She looked toward the sky. "I don't belong _anywhere_."

Shepard sat there in silence, listening to the wind whip across the treetops and the last remains of day light the trees an angry, blazing orange.

For those single, lone moments, she opened herself up once again. Old wounds were allowed to tear open and tears dripped freely down her cheeks.

For this _one_ moment, she allowed herself to be selfish. To be Avery Shepard.

The lines in her face softened and silver became pained gray. The mask cracked into little pieces and _sixteen_ years of agony flooded every pore of her being.

The moment came and went in an instant.

The eyes hardened to steel, slumped shoulders squared, and the mask of the soldier fixed itself into place.

Avery disappeared into darkness and Commander Shepard asserted control.

Shepard dusted off her pants and straightened, staring straight ahead into the horizon.

The tears dried against her cheeks as she lifted her hand into a firm salute to the fallen.

Her hand dropped slowly, shoved again into her pocket as she bowed her head.

"Happy Birthday, John."

With one last look at the tombstone, Shepard pivoted on her heel and started back on her way to the shuttle.

She would never return to the Graveyard again.

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**A/N:** Again, thank you for reading the story. If you could, please leave a comment. Again, thanks :)


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